


Lunascope

by Antosha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Astrology, Community: catchmysnitch, F/M, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Luna Lovegood Being Luna Lovegood, Luna Lovegood is a Good Friend, Luna Lovegood the Harry/Ginny Shipper, Past Dean Thomas/Ginny Weasley, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Quidditch Player Ginny Weasley, Takes place during Half-Blood Prince, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: Sometime a dark and stormy night is just the thing to give you a little clarity.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood & Ginny Weasley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	Lunascope

**Author's Note:**

> This is my response to a catchmysnitch challenge: Lunascope. It is also by way of being a (somewhat belated) gift for the issuer of that challenge, the ever-wonderful stmargarets. Bless her. :-)
> 
> This is not an entry in hpgw_otp's Halloween challenge, alas, in spite of its summary (and first line). Too long. Too late. Though it obviously did inspire me, a bit. 
> 
> Warnings: A bit of angst, the most mild of implied teen sexuality. Luna-as-H/G-shipper. (No H/G/L. Not even a little. I think.) Set during HBP, some time between chapters 23 and 24.

It was a dark and stormy night…  
  
Well, it was certainly damp, and it was certainly drizzly. There wasn’t anything terribly _wuthering_ about the weather—certainly nothing even vaguely romantic. _Definitely not that,_ Ginny thought to herself as she pulled open Hogwarts’s huge main doors.  
  
“You could at least _try_ ,” growled Demelza as they stomped out of the spring rain and into the school’s enormous entry hall, shedding water like retrievers.  
  
“I try,” snapped Ginny, wincing as she listened to the echoes bounce off of the high stone walls and watching as Slytherins and Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws turned, curious, to see what was up. Leaning closer, she whispered, “What am I supposed to do if Dean is being such a bloody _wanker?”_  
  
Demelza sighed, and put her hand on Ginny's shoulder, and the lookiloos began to wander along again. “Look, Ginny, I know it's only been a couple of weeks since you broke it off. But the two of you have got to stop making the rest of our lives Dante’s bloody _Inferno_.”  
  
Ginny shrugged, biting down the urge to ask who the hell Dante was, anyway.  
  
“I mean,” Demelza said, “even Captain Oblivious seems to have noticed.”  
  
“Like Harry ever notices anything,” Ginny mumbled.  
  
Demelza rolled her eyes. “Ginny, I'm telling you—”  
  
Ginny held up her hands, stopping her friend’s inevitable assurances that the attention Ginny was receiving from Harry might in any way ever be changing. Demelza had been trying that on, on and off, for the past four years. Ginny didn't need to hear it again.  
  
Sighing, Demelza held up her own hands, conceding defeat. “Fine. But could you and Thomas at least lay off each other? 'Cause if you don't I swear I'll grab Jimmy's bat and beat the two of you to a pulp just so we can get an actual practice in.”  
  
Ginny snorted. “You'd be the only Chaser left on the squad!”  
  
“Maybe,” Demelza said, giving Ginny's shoulder a hard poke, “but at least we’d have some bloody peace!”  
  
As Demelza sauntered off, the smile that Ginny had plastered on faded away. She knew Demelza meant well, and she knew that the ongoing Arctic freeze between her and Dean was disrupting practice; the Chasers had barely been able to do the simple passing drill that they warmed up with every practice, let alone work on the Hawkshead Formation that they'd been perfecting together over the course of the year. Harry _had_ noticed, Ginny knew that; she'd seen him peering over, looking for all the world as if he was actually concerned, when Dean had started yelling at Demelza not to let _certain Chasers_ pass the Quaffle too soon. He'd actually started to come over when Ginny had growled that _certain Chasers_ ought to know to be in _position_ for once, but Dean had glared at Harry murderously, and so he'd gone back to working with the Beaters.  
  
Dean.  
  
It had all gone pear-shaped. She'd _liked_ Dean, and she knew that he'd liked her. It wasn't as if they were going to get married or anything, but it had been fun. Well, not as much so since her git of a brother had walked in on them snogging in that abandoned corridor.  
  
Her brother, and, most humiliatingly, Harry.  
  
But still, it had been fun going to Hogsmeade, learning about football and drawing, teaching him how to play Quidditch, and playing on the team together. And the kissing had been nice too, even if it had been a constant battle to keep him from pushing her to do things she just wasn't ready for. At least not with Dean. The night she'd broken up with him, they'd been enjoying a pleasant snog behind a suit of armor in the Charms corridor when he'd tried to stick his hand up her skirt for the thirteenth time that night, and she'd just lost it; she'd stomped back to Gryffindor Tower, fingers trembling as she buttoned up her blouse. When he tried to help her through the portrait hole, the feel of his hand on her elbow had been all it had taken to set her off. No matter that he swore that he hadn't touched her; he'd already touched her more than enough.  
  
When she broke it off with him, right there in the Common Room, she saw his angry side for the very first time. “Bet you wouldn't be complaining if _Harry_ was the one that was doing the touching,” he'd snarled, causing the students who weren't already staring at weeping Lavender to gawp at Ginny.  
  
Why was it that the fact that Dean couldn’t take no for an answer was somehow _Ginny’s_ fault?  
  
She hadn't even bothered to answer. After fixing him—and the gawkers—with a glare, she had turned stormed up the stairs to the girls' dormitory, where Hermione had joined her, feeling unwelcome in her own rooms, and where they'd both sniffled themselves to sleep in Ginny's four-poster, cursing the uselessness of both sexes.  
  
The problem was, as much as she would like to have denied it, Dean had probably been right.  
  
Not that Harry would be touching Ginny anytime soon. Demelza might be sure that he was staring at her all the time, and in a manner that Demelza swore was anything but disinterested, but Ginny knew better—he might be her friend, and a bloody good one most of the time, but Harry would never be interested in her as anything more than that. She'd had five years to get used to that idea. She wasn't going to make herself miserable over what couldn't be, asking something of Harry that he couldn't give her—never again.  
  
With a sigh that she did her best to convert into a Charlie-like grunt, Ginny shouldered her broom and slogged up the stairs.  
  
Harry.  
  
It was always about Harry. Another grunt forced itself up from Ginny’s chest—a more honest effort this time. It was disgusting: after five years, it was _still_ all about Harry. It was like Ginny’s life, Hogwarts—the whole of the wizarding world, really—was just one of those endless adventure-romance novel series that Hermione was always reading on the sly (where the boys couldn’t see, because heaven forbid the _boys_ think of Hermione—or Ginny, for that matter—as somehow _female)._ Except instead of some insipid heroine’s name, the bloody books would always be about bloody Harry. _Harry Potter and the Two-faced Man. Harry Potter and Slytherin’s Monster._ (Merlin, she hadn’t liked _that_ book, not at all.) _Harry Potter and…_ Ginny was quite sure that there wasn’t going to be a volume in the series entitled _Harry Potter and the Scrawny Red-headed Fangirl._  
  
And really—Ginny was her own mistress now. Had been ever since that fateful conversation at the Quidditch World Cup where Hermione had finally made the awful, liberating truth clear to Ginny: she was truly invisible to Harry. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for her—he did. But as an idea. As Ron’s Sister. As The Girl Who Was Saved. As The Redhead Without Boy-bits.  
  
Well, sod him. She’d moved on. She’d got herself some boyfriends and had some fun—never mind that the fun hadn’t lasted. She was young. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and she was more than ready to see what the sea could offer….  
  
Sea. _Sea green…._  
  
Harry.  
  
Why did he have to be so bloody _nice?_ Why’d he actually have to be a bloody _hero?_ It wasn’t bloody fair, it was bloody _frustrating_ , the fact that, even now, when she could have had her pick of the boys—since her well-publicized breakup with Dean, it felt as if every git above fourth year had offered to carry her bag (as if she needed it) or had inquired as to her availability for the last Hogsmeade weekend of the school year (not going)… Even Blaise bloody Zabini had… Well, every boy not named Weasley, of course.  
  
Or Potter.  
  
Well, she didn’t want a boyfriend right now. A girl needs a boyfriend like a fish needs a broomstick, right?  
  
_Right_.  
  
Slamming open a door with her shoulder, she was shocked to find herself once again outside. The rain cooled the heat of her fury, if only somewhat.  
  
The Astronomy Tower.  
  
Hell. Her OWLs were coming up. She’d hardly put the time in on prep that she should have. Shaking her head, she turned around, determined to get back to the common room and get some actual study time in, instead of woolgathering endlessly about—  
  
“Hello, Ginny,” called an airy voice that shouldn’t have been audible above the wind and rain, but somehow was.  
  
Her hand on the doorknob, Ginny turned and peered into the gloom. “Luna?”  
  
“Yes,” answered the voice, sounding very pleased, if just as vague. “How nice to see you.”  
  
“Uh, hi.” Walking toward where the voice seemed to be coming from, she saw a clump in the shadow at the base of one of the parapets, beneath one of the brass telescope stands. “What are you doing out here on a night like this?”  
  
“Hmm?” Ginny could just make out her friend’s face, could just see the eyebrows bunch, and then fly wide. “Oh. It’s raining.”  
  
Ginny laughed. “It has been for over an hour!” WIth most people, she’d have been worried that they might take the laugh the wrong way, but not Luna. She never took anything wrong—or rather, if she did, she took it in the most gloriously wrong way possible, which was marvelous in its own way. “What are you doing up here?”  
  
Rather than answer, Luna held something up with her left hand—it looked like her butterbeer-cork necklace, but…  
  
“Are those… pumpkins?” Ginny leaned down to get a closer look.  
  
“Yes.” Indeed, the chain around Luna’s neck was ringed with miniature Jack O'Lanterns. “It’s my mum, you see.”  
  
“Your…?” Ginny looked from the pumpkins to her friend’s smiling face and back. “Oh.” It had been just this time of year. She remembered it well. It was the year the twins had gone off to Hogwarts, and suddenly the Burrow had felt _empty_ for the first time, so she and Ron had gone visiting to the Tower now and again. And that rain-soaked spring morning, just after the twins’ birthday… “Luna. I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Sorry? Why?”  
  
“Well, your mum…”  
  
“Ah. Yes, that was rather awful. But I got to know you better because of it. And it’s the reason I’ve always been able to see the Thestrals, which is quite nice.”  
  
“Yeah.” Resting her broom against the parapet, Ginny slid down the wet wall to sit next to her wet, blithe friend. She gestured at the necklace. “So, pumpkins?”  
  
Luna nodded. “Yes.” Then, picking up for once on the fact that Ginny actually was waiting for an explanation, she continued: “They are the symbol of Halloween, of course, which is the time of year when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest. I like to wrap myself in the Halloween spirit when I’m celebrating my mother’s death; I think perhaps it makes it easier for her to hear me.”  
  
“Wow.” That seemed about the only possible response. Here Ginny was, feeling so sorry for herself because of Dean, and _Harry,_ for Merlin’s sake, when Luna…  
  
Ginny looked back at the miniature jack-o’lanterns—each charmed with a miniature candle. The light flickered off of Luna’s right hand, which was holding a bronze disk that looked vaguely familiar. “Is that… a lunascope?” Professor Sinistra had dozens of them for charting the moon’s phases and the times of its strongest and weakest effects on various magical charms, potion making and such. This looked like that, but…  
  
“This?” asked Luna, sounding uncharacteristically evasive. Pulling the face of the disk against her robes, she nodded again. “Yes. Yes, it is.”  
  
“I… It's just, it doesn’t look like the ones we use in class.”  
  
Luna’s eyes widened—an alarming expression, given how wide her eyes were normally. She fixed Ginny with a long, vague stare and then sighed. “It isn’t. My… my mother charmed this one specially. Just for me.”  
  
“Oh,” said Ginny again, feeling as if she were doing a particularly spectacular, Ron-like job of stepping in it. “That’s… great.”  
  
“Yes.” Luna smiled again and it was just like the moon coming out from behind a cloud. “May I show it to you?”  
  
Flicking a dripping strand of hair out of her eyes, feeling an odd lump closing her throat, Ginny croaked, “Sure.”  
  
Luna pulled it away from her belly, peering down at the disk as if she were playing cards. Then, her face looking younger than Ginny remembered it since before her mother’s death, Luna turned the lunascope toward Ginny.  
  
The disk looked like one of the ones they used in Astronomy—sort of. Usually, the lunascopes had two views: the main one was the phase view, which showed the face of the moon on any particular date and time—turn a knob at the bottom and you could see how the moon looked on the night you were born, or the night your Defense professor disappeared “ill” for the third time in the autumn term. Or the night of October 31, 1981.  
  
The other view was a top view of the moon as it orbited the earth—logically, this was the orbit view, and that’s sort of what this looked like, Only instead of just the two, familiar bodies, there was a silver orb—clearly the moon—orbiting not a single planet, but what looked to be an entire solar system in a huge, looping ellipse.  
  
“What…?” murmured Ginny, leaning closer. “It looks like there’re at least two Marses there, and one that looks like a sort of small Saturn, but without any rings, and…” She looked back up at Luna, whose usual pallor seemed somehow both brighter and darker than usual, even in the rainy gloom. Was she _blushing_?  
  
Peering back down, Ginny tried to make out what she was looking at. One silver moon, circling in an eccentric orbit around five major bodies—two Mars’s distinctive hue; one golden, but ringless; one a rich brown like no planet that Ginny could think of; and the last a deep green—Uranus, Ginny had assumed, but…  
  
She looked at her friend again, who had managed to resurrect her smile.  
  
“They’re not planets, are they?”  
  
“Of course not.” Luna twiddled a knob that the standard-issue lunascopes didn’t have, adjusted the date, and pushed the button that would set the planets in motion. “Can you see the pattern?”  
  
“Pattern?” Ginny watched as the planets spun through a wild waltz routine, swirling crazily around and around. There didn’t seem to be a central body—no sun, no Jupiter… “Luna, are these—?”  
  
She stopped as the planets moved back, stating to loop again. Luna twiddled the speed knob, slowing the movement down, and now Ginny could see other bodies moving through the picture, like comets swooping in, disturbing the swirling dance, circling perhaps once or twice, and then disappearing. A golden orb pulled the Uranus-like planet away from one of the Marses, which was, in turn, orbited briefly by two planets—first a bluish one ( _Neptune?_ ) and then one that was streaked burgundy red and sky blue. The other Mars and the brown planet seemed to be constantly diving closer to each other, then inexplicably pulling away. The sandy-colored, Saturn-like planet looped lazily inside the moon-like one—more regular in its orbit than any of the others, clearly outside of the central swirl.  
  
“Here,” said Luna quietly, pushing a button that, if Ginny remembered correctly… Yes, suddenly, the orbits of the planets were marked with what looked liked golden chains of…  
  
“What does that say?” Ginny murmured, leaning closer, looking at the lines marking the orbits.  
  
_Friends. Friends. Friends. Friends. Friends…._  
  
No. These weren’t planets. Ginny looked up at Luna, who was peering shyly at her, her hair bejeweled with rain. “It was just three, originally—the silver moon one, and two large disks for my parents.” Luna sighed. “Then… then the one for my mother faded, and the two red ones appeared. And when I came to school, the one for my father sort of… drifted off. It’s still there, but it only floats through every once in a while. Last year, a lot of others wandered through, and the other three came, and it was much more complicated. But it was also much more interesting.” Silvery-blue eyes met Ginny’s. “Can you see the pattern? That’s what I was looking at.”  
  
Frowning, Ginny watched as the cycled started once again. She watched the brown planet and the larger of the Marses pushing and pulling their way closer, watched a light-purple asteroid come between them for a while….  
  
Watched the claret-and-blue asteroid slide in, pulling the smaller Mars away from the green planet, which followed precisely as if pulled by gravity.  
  
Watched the lavender and the wine-colored planet ( _Claret and blue? Where have I seen that combination...?_ ) veer violently out of the picture at the same time. Leaving just the six of them.  
  
Luna pushed a button, stopping the motion on the lunascope. “These are the positions as of tonight.”  
  
The four central planets were as far apart from each other as Ginny had seen them. For some reason, the sight—the distance—made her chest hurt.  
  
“Now watch,” sighed Luna, sounding very pleased. She pushed the stop/play button again and the four planets’ orbits suddenly simplified, moving toward the center. The larger Mars and the brown planet moved back into a comfortable helix-like dance around each other—never quite coming together, but never quite escaping. The other two…  
  
( _Claret and sky blue. West Ham United. Lavender._ )  
  
The other two—the smaller red orb and the green one—moved into a tight orbit around each other, leaving barely any space between them. As if that was where they had always meant to be.  
  
Ginny found herself sniffling. “Luna…” _Luna. Moon._ “…don’t try that on, please.”  
  
“It does not predict the future,” said her friend, her usually beatific smile turning sad. She pressed the stop button again. “My mother’s gifts were in Astronomy and Artithmancy, not in Divination. Daddy says that that was because it didn’t start with the letter _A_ , you see. I do not know what she intended when she created my lunascope, but I believe that she wished to assure me of the love of those I most cared for. Of those whom I loved.” Now the smile was blissful—blinding. She gestured at the six orbs on the lunascope's face. “I know that my mother never expected _this_. Some of her experiments had a way of deciding what they needed to be all on their own. Watching you and Harry, Hermione, Ron and Neville, it has been wonderful, feeling— _knowing_ that you were part of my life and that I was truly part of yours, even if only tangentially.”  
  
Ginny squeezed Luna’s hand, but her focus remained on the two orbs—hers and Harry’s—which seemed to have joined at the center of the lunascope. “This… This doesn’t predict the future.”  
  
“No,” granted Luna. “However, it does seem to sense intention, and it has been a remarkably accurate forecaster. Better, in fact, than Professor Trelawney, which is why I decided to study with Professor Firenze this year.” Now it was Luna who was squeezing _Ginny’s_ hand. “I have watched Harry all of this year, Ginny, and the end of last. Watching him _see_ you, not just here, on my lunascope, but in the Great Hall, and at DA meetings, and on the Quidditch pitch. It is like watching someone become aware of the miracle of the air that he breathes or the smell of the flowers that have always been there, but that he never noticed before.”  
  
“Don’t, Luna,” Ginny whinged, feeling the hopelessness and the anger and the fear flood up in her again.  
  
“Don’t? Don’t what?”  
  
“Don’t try to tell me Harry likes me. I’ve spent my whole time at Hogwarts coming to grips with the fact that he’ll never fancy me, and I can’t—“  
  
“Oh, but he does fancy you. Rather a lot.” Luna gazed at Ginny with a vaguely perplexed expression on her face. “When you and Dean were still passing out—“  
  
“ _Going_ out!” Even when Ginny was mired in self-pity, Luna could still make her laugh. Even if it wasn’t intentional, it was nice. “ _Passing out_ would be, like, _fainting._ ”  
  
“Oh. _Going_ out? Going where? That doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, when Dean and you were... together, Harry followed you about with his eyes, rather like a young Clabbert that's lost its horns."  
  
Ginny shivered. For months, Demelza had been feeding her the same bollocks. Well, not the _same_ bollocks. "Can Clabberts even _lose_ their horns?" Why Ginny was asking the question, she wasn't sure. Well, she was desperate to change the topic of conversation. Besides, Luna's Luna-ness was obviously catching.  
  
"Oh, yes," Luna said. "The horns run off and try hide while the Clabberts are sleeping. According to Scamander, it's a survival mechanism, though how that could be, I can't quite work out."  
  
"If you can't, I'm sure he's wrong."  
  
"Perhaps. I'd ask him, but he's dead. But Harry has definitely been following you for at least a year." Luna turned the date knob backward, and the West-Ham-hued planet zoomed back in, as well as Lavender's lavender one. Luna pointed at the green planet."Just watch where he's drawn."As Luna turned the knob again—forward this time—Ginny watched as Harry was pulled in whatever direction Ginny and Dean happened to be going in. Even as he had a close pass-by with planet Luna—the Slug Club Party—it was as if he were straining to be with _her._ Harry Potter and the Scrawny Red-headed Fangirl.  
  
_Bugger. Blast._ "There was a Scamander in Charlie's year. Probably Newt's son. Or grandson. Or something. You could ask him."  
  
"About Harry fancying you? Why should I do that? I can see that he does."  
  
"No, about Clabberts." Ginny stared at the joined dots. Pickle-toad green and brick red. "Do...? Do we, uh, does it show that we... _stay_ together?"  
  
"Ah." Luna peered at Ginny in a manner that was, for Luna, almost cagy. "Well, at the moment, it won't show past this date. The fourth of June."  
  
"It won't?"  
  
"No. At first I thought it might be broken, but..." Luna pulled the disk to her pumpkin-lit chest. "I think there are times when even Arithmancy and Astronomy can't work out all of the possibilities."  
  
"Oh." Ginny couldn't decide whether she believed in what the lunascope was showing, and, if she did, that the fact that it couldn't show any further was a disappointment or a relief.  
  
"The one other time that it froze like this was at the end of first year. Just before—"  
  
"Just before I kidnapped myself down to the Chamber of bloody Secrets."  
  
"You didn't do that." They had had this argument many times since; it was almost a matter of form at this point.  
  
"Fine." Ginny looked up into the dancing rain. "What do I do, then, Luna?"  
  
"Do?" Luna stood, shaking the water from her robes like a dog stepping from a pond. "If I were you, I should do just what I want to do. I don't think you need to do anything at all besides what you would do anyway."  
  
"Gosh. Thanks."  
  
"You're welcome." Luna reached out and helped Ginny stand. "I do think, however, that I should be ready if, some time around the tenth of May, Harry started to walk toward me looking as if he might very much wish to kiss me."  
  
"Oh?" Ginny put her arm over Luna's shoulder. "You planning on Harry walking across a room, looking to snog your socks off?"  
  
"Oh, no. I don't plan on that at all." Luna turned toward Ginny. "I have been looking forward to Harry snogging _your_ socks off for quite a long time. It's something I've rather dreamed about."  
  
Ginny hugged her friend. "Thanks. Me too."  
  
"Hmm. Though how kissing and manual carresses would remove one's stockings, I can't say that I know."  
  
"Luna!"  
  
Luna smiled at Ginny, almost as if she had done it on purpose, her bout of Luna-ness, though Ginny was fairly certain that she hadn't. "Come on, Ginny, let's go in. It is raining, you know."  
  
"Is it?" Warmth flooded through Ginny, in spite of the damp and drizzly night. She shouldered her broom and looked up again. "So it is!"  
  
Arm in arm, they walked back down into the castle, and into the future.


End file.
